The cleaned up action. The cosmoline was so bad I literally had to boil the rifle in my turkey fryer pot.
Bayonet Extended
Bayonet mount and locking mechanism
According to my receiver marking and 7.62X54R.NET my barrel and receiver were manufactured in 1953.
However my bolt doesn't match but it also has what appears to be a 1953 Serial number.
The bolt was almost the death of me, considering how much cosmoline was inside of it. Boiling it got it all out and then my only problem was properly lubricating it.
Once again according to 7.62X54R.NET this is a round low wall receiver.
If I hadn't boiled the rifle, I doubt I would have gotten all of the cosmoline out of the magazine and it's spring.
In THIS post I showed you how I used a large piece of PVC pipe and a space heater to get a bunch of cosmoline out of the stock. I then resorted to using a heat gun to get some more "hard to get" cosmoline out of the stock and the handguard.
Even after 30 hours in the PVC with the heater going, there was still quite a bit of cosmoline in the inletted portions of the stock and the top handguard.
After 90 minutes of using the heat gun and wiping it out and scraping all the nooks and crannies, the kids and I finally got it to the point where I think it should be ok.
I'm probably going to refinish the stock to make it a nicer looking rifle and to better protect it. If this shoots decent this will be my newest deer gun. With the feral hogs we have down here in Texas, I don't want to be limited to 1 shot from my .50 cal muzzleloader if a hog decides to investigate my kill, so having 5 easy rounds available are a comforting thought.
Hopefully it will quit dropping water long enough for my family's other piece of property to dry out enough I can go fire off a few rounds to see if it functions right.
